GUWAHATI: Tripura Congress is confident about winning the East Tripura parliamentary constituency even as it awaits fresh poll in the West Tripura Lok Sabha seat in the wake of “gross irregularities” affecting voting in that constituency.
Election to West Tripura seat was held on April 11 while the polls in regard to East Tripura had to be deferred from April 18 to 23 because of law and order issues.
“We are confident of winning East Tripura. As far as West Tripura is concerned, we have demanded repoll as the election was reduced to a mockery with irregularities regarding the functioning, installation and replacement of cameras at several polling booths,” Tripura Pradesh Congress Committee vice-president, Tapas Dey told The Shillong Times on Saturday.
The Opposition parties in the state, including Congress and CPI (M) have alleged that the election in 846 out of the 1679 booths in West Tripura Lok Sabha constituency was rigged, a charge which the ruling BJP has denied and termed as “baseless and politically motivated”.
“A special observer appointed by the Election Commission, Vivek Zutshi, is in Tripura to review the situation and we are hopeful that a date for repolling in the constituency would be announced soon,” Dey said.
It may be noted that returning officer, Sandip Mahatme has admitted that gross irregularities had marred voting in 65 polling booths of West Tripura constituency.
In his report, he informed the Election Commission that no camera was installed in 20 polling booths, while cameras fell down at 15 polling booths and replacement was not made during polling for the seat.
Besides, he stated that in six polling stations, cameras were installed only after 6am. “In six other polling booths, cameras were taken out before polling was over, while in three booths, vendors kept changing the location of cameras. In five polling booths, cameras fell down on the floor,” he stated in the report.
The Opposition parties had raised several complaints of booth capturing, rigging and other malpractices in the election to the West Tripura seat.
Meanwhile, according to official sources, scrutiny of all poll-related reports, documents and video footage of East Tripura parliamentary constituency has been completed where no major complaint was reported.